Jonathan Swift Quotes

Nothing is so great an example of bad manners as flattery. If you flatter all the company, you please none; If you flatter only one or two, you offend the rest.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Bad Flattery Flirty Greatness Offend Praise Yourself
Poor nations are hungry, and rich nations are proud; and pride and hunger will ever be at variance.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Hungry Nation Poor Pride Proud
Ay, do despise me, I’m the prouder for it; I like to be despised.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Despair Hate Myself Proud
Promises and pie-crust are made to be broken.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Break Food Promise
Every man desires to live long, but no man wishes to be old.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Desire Live Man Old Philosophy
Vision is seeing the invisible.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Invisible One Liner Vision
There are few, very few, that will own themselves in a mistake.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Mistake Person Responsibility
How is it possible to expect that mankind will take advice when they will not so much as take warning.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Advice Expectation Kind Man Possible Warning
War: that mad game the world so loves to play.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Game Love Mad Play War
Ale is meat, drink and cloth; it will make a cat speak and a wise man dumb.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Drink Dumb Man Talk
If a lump of soot falls into the soup and you cannot conveniently get it out, stir it well in and it will give the soup a French taste.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Advice Fall Food Taste Yourself
Politics, as the word is commonly understood, are nothing but corruptions.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Corruption Politics Understand Word
It is useless to attempt to reason a man out of a thing he was never reasoned into.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Himself Man Reason
I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Man Myself See Shame Wickedness Wonder
Every day is an opportunity to make a new happy ending. May you live all the days of your life.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Happy Life Live Opportunity Talk Yourself
It is a maxim among these lawyers, that whatever hath been done before, may legally be done again: and therefore they take special care to record all the decisions formerly made against common justice and the general reason of mankind.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Care Decision Kind Law Legal Man Reason Record
I never knew a man come to greatness or eminence who lay abed late in the morning.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Greatness Man Morning Success Worth
No wise man ever wished to be younger.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Man One Liner Wisdom Young
The stoical scheme of supplying our wants by lopping off our desires, is like cutting off our feet when we want shoes.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Cut Desire Need Ourselves Shoes System
An idle reason lessens the weight of the good ones you gave before.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Goodness Reason Yourself
May you live all the days of your life.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Day Life Live Yourself
The best doctors in the world are Doctor Diet, Doctor Quiet, and Doctor Merryman.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Best Doctor Happiness Quiet
It is impossible that anything so natural, so necessary, and so universal as death, should ever have been designed by providence as an evil to mankind.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Design Evil Impossible Kind Man Natural Necessary
He was a bold man that first ate an oyster.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Bold Eat Food Man
It is computed that eleven thousand persons have at several times suffered death rather than submit to break their eggs at the smaller end.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Break End Person Time
Physicians ought not to give their judgment of religion, for the same reason that butchers are not admitted to be jurors upon life and death.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Death Judgement Life Reason Religion
There is nothing constant in this world but inconsistency.
JONATHAN SWIFT

Consistency One Liner World

Famous Irish Poets